Reader Reactions

Editor’s note: Thank you for your letter about our report on retirement debt for public employees. As we wrote in our post, “we encourage” feedback and will update our work as appropriate. Trust and the integrity of our work is at the core of all we do at CALmatters. We are committed to a fair […]

Reader reaction to “Retirement Debt: What’s the problem and how does it affect you?“ Great article. Clear and informative. I would have preferred that there was more detail re Gray Davis’s 1999 benefit increase. It wasn’t just an “enhancement.” It was a huge and disastrous increase. By changing from 2 percent to 3 percent, that […]

Reader reaction to “Retirement Debt: What’s the problem and how does it affect you?“ You wrote: “The UC system authorized the first in-state tuition hike on students in seven years due in part to soaring pension outlays.” What you failed to tell your readers is that the UC system took a pension holiday for 20 […]

Reader reaction to “Retirement Debt: What’s the problem and how does it affect you?“ I just finished reading the CALmatters article about public pensions. It has a lot of detail, and seems reasonable. However, it is not complete. I am a retiree in the County of Ventura retirement system. Our system does not pay for […]

Reader reaction to “Retirement Debt: What’s the problem and how does it affect you?“ Here’s the other side of the story of what happened when a community switched from a defined benefit pension to a defined contribution 401(k) plan. It also happened like this in San Jose, when Chuck Reed tried to do the same […]

This letter to the editor is in response to Is California’s investment in needy students paying off? Few signs yet that achievement gap is closing CALmatters reporter Jessica Calefati relies on faulty research, narrow metrics and insufficient data to make sweeping generalizations and unsubstantiated conclusions about the effectiveness of California’s landmark Local Control Funding Formula. Calefati’s […]

This letter was written in response to A child’s death and the power of the dental lobby, which CALmatters published on April 13, 2016. “There is no evidence that dental anesthesia under this model of care carries a greater risk than dental care with a second anesthesiologist present,” Alicia Malaby, spokeswoman for the California Dental […]

With wages stagnant, inequality growing, and Washington, D.C., gridlocked, states and cities are taking matters into their own hands by raising the minimum wage.  Before 2012, only five local governments in the United States had their own minimum wage laws; now about 30 do.  At the forefront are 15 California cities and counties, the largest […]

Of late, the minimum wage battle in California appears to be never-ending. No sooner did California increase its minimum wage to $9 per hour in 2013 (slated to increase to $10 per hour in January 2016), did some legislators attempt to accelerate and further increase the minimum wage. More recently, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee […]